Tag Archives: Russia

I’m propped up in my bunk, staring at the cursor go blip-blip-blip as the magni-stream pulls me at an ungodly speed in your direction.

I’m having a helluva time brainstorming ways to tell you, ways to pitch a fistful of antacid into the bitter stew. It’s that familiar, grasping feeling, like on my less-inspired days at the firm. Big client, bracing deadline, blank mind. This is different, though. More personal. And it’s clouding the ‘ol think tank. Just off my periphery, there’s an oval display, and if I chose, I could look upon you at any time. But I just can’t meet you with my eyes right now.

So I stare. Blip-blip-blip.

I want to super-charge the imagination, inject meaning while unfolding the heart and all that nonsense. At the very least, I’d like to give you a sense of drama at the precipice, since I know how much you like drama.

Just enough time to set aside differences (suddenly seem trivial, etc.).

Earth’s armies=rally against common enemy/desperate stand against Alien invaders?

Reading my notes back, I’m just embarrassed. It’s not that I wouldn’t love to float you all that fooey. I would. But the straight dope, my human friends, only requires one bullet point:

Blowing up Earth because ran out of gold.

I’m not a tech guy, but the gist is: We’ll push a big red button and fire a tiny black hole into the Marianas Trench that’ll sponge up Earth’s thermonuclear fuel. It’ll make the planet act like a star going supernova, your beautiful blue globe (our beautiful blue globe, if I may be so bold) shrinking down to the size of a gumball an instant before supernova remnants explode outward. Boom! Hunks of continents will go ping-ponging off the containment field wall. We’ll overlay a de-motilizer to slow everything to a crawl, send in a couple dozen crews, and start mining the chunks.

Easy peas-ey.

You see, :LKeimu is burning up. We’ve got a global warming thing, too. Have for a while now. About thirty centuries ago, the science guys sussed how to finagle the components in gold to arrest the warming process. At the time, we had oodles of the stuff, but by 21 Post-Czeilon (that’s 13,079 B.C. to you) we had drilled ourselves dry. We gazed skyward, and for the first time noticed, well, wouldja look at that? The sky is filled with billions of sparkling little nuggets! And with that, the planetary gold rush was on.

Earth wasn’t even on the surveying map. We tripped over it disengaging from the magni-stream for repairs on our way to YZ Ceti. We conducted a global scan, on a lark, really. Turns out, Earth was chock full. Now, keep in mind, this was before the fertile crescent, Samaria, Babylon, all of that. Y’all were practically still cavemen.

We hung around, slurping up gold, and while we weren’t looking, human civilization dawned. You had become so precious! Scrawling images of us on cave walls, carving pictures into the side of mountains, sacrificing members of your population in our honor. Ha! The good ‘ol Pyramid Days. Anubis and Thoth used to make y’all soil your loincloths and hustle twenty-ton rocks around the desert. Try to emanate Anubis these days and you get laughed at. Or shot.

Well, there, I’ve done it. Bucked up and looked out the oval display. There she is. Blue. Beautiful. Serene. Growing larger by the nanosecond.

I’m here…to bear witness? To say goodbye? I’m not sure why I’m torturing myself. That should be the brainstorm: Reasons Why Raul Came On This Godforsaken Jaunt. They don’t need me. I’ve got jack for mining experience, and the last time I hung out with miners they dumped a bucket of jibbers in my bunk, but not before they sprayed it with jibber pheromone.

Yet, here I be. Heeding some strange compulsion, I persuaded the Vaulted Counsel to let me pal-up with the resolute bores of the Golden Beholder, a Class D Floatship armed with a Mark IV Destroyer-Extractor. The V.C. allowed it, probably because of my history with the NDEGS.

Can I just say something? We don’t have much use for emotion, my kind, only the pragmatic version. But, I think…

I think I’m depressed.

Like, clinically!

I mean, I’ve always been fond of you. For a species that only developed sedentary agriculture 15,000 years ago, you’re impressively precocious. Mere survival came easy, and you started stockpiling hours of free time, using it to scour the recesses of your intellect. Improving, inventing, refining. Of course, the scouring has taken on epic superfluosity. I mean, have you seen Honey Boo Boo? Did you catch the last episode of Amish Mafia? Why, just last week you auctioned off the right to kill a black rhino to benefit the conservation of the black rhino. Ha!

I kid, but I kid from love. I’ve been among you for over a century and, trust me, y’all are a hell of a lot more interesting than us Greys.

Yes, I’m a Grey.

Yes, we exist.

And we look like — well, you know what we look like.

Zeta Reticuli is our X-Files classification, but if I’m converting faithfully to the English alphabet, we’re really called Hnfxsklyns. Tell you what, I’ll have mercy and just refer to us as Greys.

We Greys are just that: grey. And by that I mean, dull. Trust me, behind those shimmering pools of dark matter we call eyes? There ain’t much going on. A Grey’s idea of a fun night out is sitting alone in a frigid Ponderence Cell osmosing The Resigned Life of Tolerant Equals in Temperate Silence with Forward by L.N. Ghlyux, Minister of Staunch.

As for me? I’d like to think I’ve got some spunk. But if I do, it’s only because you’ve rubbed off on me. In fact, I’m what you’d call (loosely translated from :LKeimuri) a ‘people-pleaser,’ which is most definitely not a term of endearment. Some of my guys – the ones who spent some real time on Earth – they get it. Most of my cohorts? They think y’all are bacteria-ridden, bumbling savages, characteristics which, I should point out, are helpful to ascribe to a species one routinely inconveniences, kidnaps and yes, probes.

Now, hold on a second.

Before you get all bent out of shape.

I haven’t probed anyone. Personally.

I’m in Earth Advertising. Or, rather, I was. Precious metals department (Gold). Have you seen the billboards, A WOMAN CRAVES A MAN WHO’S BOLD/SO GO FOR THE GOLD? That’s mine.

Alas, there’s only so much one people-pleaser can do. And, quite frankly, I’m out of ideas. The invasion/enslavement option was vetted extensively and deemed too cost-inefficient and the NDEGS initiative (that’s my thing — Non-Destructive Earth Gold Sourcing) was discontinued last year for same. The Vaulted Counsel has decreed it’s time to start digging on Earth, digging being a euphemism in :LKeimuri politics for blowing a planet to smithereens and mining the chunks.

I tried to avoid this. I really did. They floated the idea of digging (read: blowing up) about a hundred years ago, but I came up with the softer, gentler approach.My elevator pitch to His Superior Eminent Provost of the V.C.:

Glacxon, my man. How the hell are you? Killer eye-flaps. Those new? Lookin’ fly, bro. Listen. About Earth. Sure, we can prospect the gold ourselves. Been doing it for centuries. But prospecting in secret is a real bitch these days. Oy Krisch! Cameras! Newspapers! Am I right? Digging’s an option, suresure. But why blow up a planet if we don’t have to? I get it. Humans are a danger to themselves. Always slashing and burning and bickering and bashing. A silly species, no doubt. Why, just last week, the head of the United States Patent Office declared there was nothing left to invent. Ha!

Glacxon, my dude. I know you, bro. You’re a pragmatist. What about a lower-cost option that gets them to work for us again, like back in the good ‘ol Pyramid Days? You remember the Pyramid Days! Good times. No. GREAT TIMES. Am I wrong? Am I? We go back to a psychological approach, with a modern flair. Place agents as executives at the big advertising firms, pushing gold, gold, gold. Make the humans want it, crave it, need it. They’ll get all hot and bothered and start scrubbing the globe, prospecting for us! You feel me? We use a skeleton crew from :LKeimu’s Earth Prospecting team to monitor as the humans lead us to the good stuff. Leave ‘em a nugget or two for themselves, pop in through the back door and extract most of the gold for ourselves. We get the gold at lower operating cost, and, best of all, no boom boom! Boo ya!

Of course, I said this all in :LKeimuri, so it sounded much more stiff, and we weren’t in an elevator, we were in a Glüpschron sludge-pod getting our eyes done. The point is, Glacxon let me present my case to the Vaulted Counsel, and they went for it hook, line and sinker.

For over a hundred years, Hnfxsklyns (sorry, Greys) have been embedded as executives in Earth advertising firms, crafting ads inducing the lust for gold. Jewelry was primary, but we had agents working the Investments, Electronics, and Dentistry angles as well.

My employees had no clue their boss was a big-headed alien (although I guess a big-headed boss wouldn’t be too unusual lol). To them, I was Roger Monroe, a tan, blue eyed, glorious specimen of an ad executive. Think D. Draper, but blonde. I was a real stunner. Or so I appeared. A few co-workers made passes at me, at holiday parties and the like, and were confused by the spindly body beneath the perception field. Jessica, my secretary, once put a foot in my crotch at a brainstorming session and pulled it back really quickly.

The NDEGS initiative was a rousing success for over a century. But, even I have to admit, it’s not cost-effective anymore. The gold deposits are deep, too deep for human prospectors to detect. And we need more…a lot more.

Now, you might be saying to yourself: ‘WTF! How am I reading this if this Grey A-hole blew up my planet the day he wrote it?’

You’d be right to ask. I’ve been asking myself, too. Why sit here composing a missive to a species that’ll be extinct before they even receive it?

Real talk? I’ve been debating something else as I write. I think I know why I persuaded the V.C. to let me come on this mission. I’m considering doing something. Something…drastic. Rash. Dramatic. If I’m being honest, I think it was my plan all along.

I’ve seen some awful things on Earth. All the big wars, past and present. Unimaginable atrocity, degradation, evil. But there’s the other side. Simple acts of kindness, the striving for compassion, empathy, understanding. A soft pat on the back. Gentle, comforting eyes. Belly laughter. Trust me, I didn’t go in for any of this hoke until they told me they were going to decimate the planet. It’s amazing how your attitude can shift when your beloved lies before you on the proverbial deathbed.

The Vaulted Counsel, they’re just not concerned about anything other than the cost-benefit, but, for crying out loud, you’re still evolving! Still improving, inventing, refining. Human civilization hasn’t dawned, it’s only begun to dawn. There’s so much more for you to do. I can’t be a part of ending it. I just can’t.

Yes, I’m going to do it.

Right after I hit send.

So, here’s the deal, you glorious, deranged species:

If you’re reading this, it’s because I changed my mind about going along with the mission. If I changed my mind, then I will have snuck down into the Golden Beholder’s firing room and reversed the polarity on the Mark IV Destroyer-Extractor. If I changed my mind and reversed the polarity on the Mark IV Destroyer-Extractor, then it will be me that went boom. When they push the big red button, The Golden Beholder will be reduced to the size of a gumball before exploding outward, spreading bits of this ship, the crew, and yours truly across limitless space. I sincerely hope that some of my bits will land on Earth.

But wait!

Here’s the thing.

If I changed my mind and reversed the polarity on the Destroyer-Extractor and they pushed the big red button and I went boom, they’ll find out on :LKeimu. Soon. The Destroyer-Extractor on this ship is one of only a few in the :LKeimu arsenal, and I know for a fact that there aren’t any more within a light year. That means they’ll revisit the invasion/enslavement option. They’ll look to send another ship, and probably war ships — massive destroyers with jagged architecture that look like giant Praying Mantises.

Bottom line:

If you’re reading this, that armada of monolithic warships is on its way after all.

But, my human friends! There’s just enough time to prepare your defense. Of course, it will take a united front to withstand the Hnfxsklyn invasion, so you must set aside your differences and come together as a unified force.